Last Call Review of draft-ietf-dots-robust-blocks-04
review-ietf-dots-robust-blocks-04-artart-lc-kyzivat-2022-09-13-00

Reviewer: Paul Kyzivat
Review result: Ready with Nits

I am the assigned ARTART reviewer for this Internet-Draft.

Document: draft-ietf-dots-robust-blocks-04
Reviewer: Paul Kyzivat
Review Date: 2022-09-13
IETF LC End Date: 2022-09-16
IESG Telechat date: ?

Summary: Ready with Nits

Issues:

Major: 0
Minor: 0
Nits:  2

1) NIT: "Parameter" vs. "Attribute"

Throughout the document the terms "Parameter" and "Attribute" are used 
more or less interchangeably. The term "Parameter" seems to be derived 
from RFCs 7252 and 9177 (e.g., in Table 1) and IIUC refers to abstract 
values without regard to how they are represented or transferred. 
Parameters are denoted by names in CAPITAL_LETTERS.

The term "Attribute" seems to come from the definition of a DOTS signal 
channel in RFC 9132. Attributes are denoted by lower-case-hyphenated-names.

I suggest it would be clearer to consistently use Parameter when 
discussing the former and Attribute when discussing the latter. 
(However, in the IANA registry table the column containing these 
"attributes" is labeled "Parameter Name", and so the template for the 
registry will have to refer to it that way. Unfortunate!)

2) NIT: Relation of Parameters and Attributes

The Introduction ends with:

    ... Nevertheless,
    the attributes listed in Table 1 are not supported in [RFC9132].
    This document defines new DOTS signal channel attributes that are
    used to customize the configuration of robust block transmission in a
    DOTS context.

This seems to be the prime purpose of this document. Yet it fails to 
explicitly state the connection between the parameters listed in Table 1 
and the "new DOTS signal channel attributes".

I see that there is a 1:1 correspondence between the two, with the 
exception of NON_TIMEOUT_RANDOM, which apparently need not transmitted 
because it is calculated. I think it would be helpful to state this 
explicitly here in the document. Perhaps:

    ... Nevertheless,
    the parameters listed in Table 1 are not supported in [RFC9132].
    This document defines new DOTS signal channel attributes,
    corresponding to the parameters in Table 1, that are used to
    customize the configuration of robust block transmission in a
    DOTS context.